Back from Paris for few days, I still miss the city very much. Its beautiful landscape, depth of culture, and reservation of history entice me. Paris is indeed a city with stories. Yet New York is still my favor. I like its energy, diversity and creativity. It is a city with possibility, potential and promisingness.
New York has the tolerance of different cultures, which can thus thrive and flourish by mixing and interacting with other cultures. It is the fusion and coexistence that invigorate one another and keep cultures growing. This also means that New York appreciates differences: it is okay and even better to be yourself, and try every way to express yourself, and all kinds of expression is welcomed and could be celebrated. The creativity here is unlimited and prosperous, providing the city with endless resource.
Paris, on the other hand, is more of a uniform and monotonous place. It is weighed down with the burden of history, which, in turn, becomes an expectation, even an asset nowadays. The history glorifies and enriches the city, both culturally and economically, but definitely not creatively. The city drags its feet over changes because the past was so glamourous and indispensable. With the effort of preserving the history, the progressiveness and variety are therefore compromised. Case in point, I agree that buildings with similar style does render the city consistent, with pleasant view and organization, yet this consistency simultaneously constraints the development of creativity and experimentalism. The city would always develop within the frame, hardly bordering outward.
I’m not saying Paris is no match with New York. Actually, I had my peace of mind better in Paris when I was walking down those winding, narrow yet quaint streets, which makes your idea go up and down and thus encourages you to think. I thought to myself, no wonder so many artists and writers once gathered here! The lay of the land is just so though-provoking and sentimental. However, I do not know how long this sentimentality would last if the city is always the same. Perhaps that is why Paris is no longer the cultural capital of the world. It once shines, brightly and matchlessly, but it can only shine that much and that long.
